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Topic: Pond5 sales down in January. Shutterstock sales surpassed it for the first time (Read 54121 times)

My pond5 sales is down in January. Shutterstock sales finally surpassed for the first time since I joined SS about 2 years ago. Is this the trend? Are the buyers switching to SS from Pond5? Or is it just me? Anybody seeing the same trend this month?

My pond5 sales is down in January. Shutterstock sales finally surpassed for the first time since I joined SS about 2 years ago. Is this the trend? Are the buyers switching to SS from Pond5? Or is it just me? Anybody seeing the same trend this month?

The first time something happens does not make it a trend, hopefully just a blip.

My pond5 sales is down in January. Shutterstock sales finally surpassed for the first time since I joined SS about 2 years ago. Is this the trend? Are the buyers switching to SS from Pond5? Or is it just me? Anybody seeing the same trend this month?

The first time something happens does not make it a trend, hopefully just a blip.

P5 does not have sales operations at all and by looking at their job board they don't have any intentions to invest in sales and get more buyers for our media files!

All they do is trying to get more contributors and media files sitting on their database to show off and get more funding, while their staff travel around the world.

That's why for me ,i guess, shutterstock excels at selling mostly my b-rated clips (b-rated according to me of course),and my good ones get regular and decent to high priced commissions over at p5.Because you know that when you use your own aesthetic criteria to make a company that pushes forward a certain kind of images,there is always a chance that you will kind of suck at it from another person's perspective.That's brilliant.Thanks ss.

Please keep finding buyers for the type of stuff i cringe when i upload to all those other boring sites that dont push their own aesthetic agenda and hunt down buyers to push stuff down their throat.like they are babies who need to be told what to buy for their own good.But hey,that's just my experience.

My pond5 sales is down in January. Shutterstock sales finally surpassed for the first time since I joined SS about 2 years ago. Is this the trend? Are the buyers switching to SS from Pond5? Or is it just me? Anybody seeing the same trend this month?

You make enough from Pond 5 on a monthly basis to make this claim? If so, my congrats. My sales are spotty, 350 vids and 3000 stills. Some months $5 some $150. So for me way too difficult to assess monthly performance.

P5 does not have sales operations at all and by looking at their job board they don't have any intentions to invest in sales and get more buyers for our media files!

All they do is trying to get more contributors and media files sitting on their database to show off and get more funding, while their staff travel around the world.

That's why for me ,i guess, shutterstock excels at selling mostly my b-rated clips (b-rated according to me of course),and my good ones get regular and decent to high priced commissions over at p5.Because you know that when you use your own aesthetic criteria to make a company that pushes forward a certain kind of images,there is always a chance that you will kind of suck at it from another person's perspective.That's brilliant.Thanks ss.

Please keep finding buyers for the type of stuff i cringe when i upload to all those other boring sites that dont push their own aesthetic agenda and hunt down buyers to push stuff down their throat.like they are babies who need to be told what to buy for their own good.But hey,that's just my experience.

This is how P5 wows buyers to buy from them. Template email sent on Jan 15th (subject line "Best wishes from Pond5") that I pulled out from my junk folder.

Hello,

It's been a while since we last saw you and we miss you ! Since it's Holiday season we'd like to give you a 10% discount for your future purchases, valid thru end of February.

This year was a very important year for us, our collection of videos reached over 3 million clips and more than 100,000 files in 4K, We were the first to accept native content in Redcode RAW (R3D) and we are very happy to offer the best audiovisual content and in the best possible quality! Our media collection now reaches over 17 million files from more than 35,000 artists from around the world.

So what? It's an ad to encourage buyers - almost all the agencies do this from time to time. What is your point?

Are you even a P5 contributor? If not, then why are you complaining? And if you are a contributor there and hate them so much then why not just drop them?

I am just amazed and upset how ALL micro stock companies easily use our files to get investments and earn huge amount of money while not give much in return. That's all.

I can't disagree with that at all (in fact, I pressed the 'Agree' button).

However, I would add that at least P5 takes less than almost any other microstock agency. And it isn't like running massive server arrays is cheap. Not to mention the personnel they have to employee to keep the site running, and whatever advertising they do. 50% the sale is high, but it wouldn't surprise me if their costs were a huge part of their 50% take.

So what? It's an ad to encourage buyers - almost all the agencies do this from time to time. What is your point?

Are you even a P5 contributor? If not, then why are you complaining? And if you are a contributor there and hate them so much then why not just drop them?

I am just amazed and upset how ALL micro stock companies easily use our files to get investments and earn huge amount of money while not give much in return. That's all.

I can't disagree with that at all (in fact, I pressed the 'Agree' button).

However, I would add that at least P5 takes less than almost any other microstock agency. And it isn't like running massive server arrays is cheap. Not to mention the personnel they have to employee to keep the site running, and whatever advertising they do. 50% the sale is high, but it wouldn't surprise me if their costs were a huge part of their 50% take.

Yes, but 50% concept where no actual buyers is 0% for us, and by looking at their job board no hope for sales push anytime soon. These guys had been playing around last 8 years, yet same issues: uploading nightmares, slow reviews, low quality files, keywords disaster, crap amateurish advertising, staff constantly on holiday!!!

My only conclusion is bad management that got to be replaced asap, if any hope for some serious growth in sales.

I understand your frustration and I wish they had more sales, too, but complaining and calling them names is not very constructive. It is not easy to set up a successful stock agency and compete in the current market - it takes tons of know-how and cash. The goal for the owners of the agencies is to make money for themselves, we are just the means for them to achieve their own benefit. P5 at least is paying us 50% of any sales they make, which is a lot better than almost every other agency, and based on their poll position they are doing fine for many contributors. We can either contribute to them or not. If enough contributors decide it is no longer worth it and stop then eventually the agencies will have to pay us more to entice us back. The problem is that there are always people willing to give their work away for very little or even for free, and the agencies already have so many files that they really don't need to accept any more in the short term (e.g., GL Stock) to survive. And it may be that the microstock wave has passed and moved on to new ways of selling images - Google, Adobe and facebook may be the marketing giants of the future with very little revenue for us. Or not. Who knows? I will continue to support any agency that makes it easy to upload, has reasonable reviews and 40% or more commissions as long as they have enough sales to get payouts in a reasonable time. When sales no longer justify the effort then I will stop.

So SSContributor (who sound like an SS hired troll, btw) is whining and complaining because his sales are down?> Maybe try and improve your work or try another career if this is not working for you. And, even more amazing, is that SSContributor wants a cut of the financing that a company receives. Explain to us why you feel like you deserve a cut of financing and how how much would be satisfactory for you?

For those of you who's sales are up, at Pond5 or elsewhere, congratulations! Rising sales are always something worth celebrating.

I'm afraid I can't help you with your sales elsewhere, but if they aren't where you'd like them to be at Pond5, I do have some helpful advice to share that I hope will help.

If you have more high-quality media, definitely continue uploading more of your work. Our customers know what's good, and the larger your high-quality collection, the more recognition you can have with our community. Buyers are always hungry for amazing content! Many of the most successful sellers at Pond5 are all users who are consistently uploading new material on a regular basis.

For your clips to be easily found, accurate rich info in titles, descriptions and keywords are helpful. How you title and keyword your work is very important. If you spam your keywords or titles, it will only hurt your visibility. So doing this in more detail, but ACCURATELY, has a significant 60% SEO (search engine optimization) weight on the search results.

We also always recommend that you promote your work to up your exposure. Pond5 can't promote your individual account for you, we have far too many artists for that to be feasible, so we focus on promoting the whole website. But it's always good to market your individual account too. You can create a Collection bin showcasing your footage, and then simply copy the link, to add that to your website or social outlet. Here is a link to our Knowledge Base article explaining this: What are collections? - http://help.pond5.com/hc/articles/200944893-What-Are-Collections-

Another option is just to simply post links of your clips all over the internet. You can even add some of your clips to our "free clip promotion" and this will also help get your name out there.

Here you will find tons of very valuable metric information, such as what kinds of files comprise what percentage of site sales, the most commonly searched keywords, and so much more information that we think are useful for our artists.

And lastly, if you use your Referral Links, you can even make 5% on all purchases or sales made for the first year of people who sign up using the links you give them. That's another way of thanking you, for sharing Pond5 with your friends! - https://www.pond5.com/referral

I work in customer service myself, so if you've ever written in to us then you may have worked with me before. You can always write in to us at [email protected] or call us at +1(646)233-2155. Our phone support hours are 10am to 8pm eastern, and if your call goes to voicemail please do leave a detailed message. There are only one or two people answering phones at any one time, so we make it a priority to return calls with messages left as quickly as possible, typically within three hours. You can also always write to me directly if you like, at [email protected].

For those of you who's sales are up, at Pond5 or elsewhere, congratulations! Rising sales are always something worth celebrating.

I'm afraid I can't help you with your sales elsewhere, but if they aren't where you'd like them to be at Pond5, I do have some helpful advice to share that I hope will help.

If you have more high-quality media, definitely continue uploading more of your work. Our customers know what's good, and the larger your high-quality collection, the more recognition you can have with our community. Buyers are always hungry for amazing content! Many of the most successful sellers at Pond5 are all users who are consistently uploading new material on a regular basis.

For your clips to be easily found, accurate rich info in titles, descriptions and keywords are helpful. How you title and keyword your work is very important. If you spam your keywords or titles, it will only hurt your visibility. So doing this in more detail, but ACCURATELY, has a significant 60% SEO (search engine optimization) weight on the search results.

We also always recommend that you promote your work to up your exposure. Pond5 can't promote your individual account for you, we have far too many artists for that to be feasible, so we focus on promoting the whole website. But it's always good to market your individual account too. You can create a Collection bin showcasing your footage, and then simply copy the link, to add that to your website or social outlet. Here is a link to our Knowledge Base article explaining this: What are collections? - http://help.pond5.com/hc/articles/200944893-What-Are-Collections-

Another option is just to simply post links of your clips all over the internet. You can even add some of your clips to our "free clip promotion" and this will also help get your name out there.

Here you will find tons of very valuable metric information, such as what kinds of files comprise what percentage of site sales, the most commonly searched keywords, and so much more information that we think are useful for our artists.

And lastly, if you use your Referral Links, you can even make 5% on all purchases or sales made for the first year of people who sign up using the links you give them. That's another way of thanking you, for sharing Pond5 with your friends! - https://www.pond5.com/referral

I work in customer service myself, so if you've ever written in to us then you may have worked with me before. You can always write in to us at [email protected] or call us at +1(646)233-2155. Our phone support hours are 10am to 8pm eastern, and if your call goes to voicemail please do leave a detailed message. There are only one or two people answering phones at any one time, so we make it a priority to return calls with messages left as quickly as possible, typically within three hours. You can also always write to me directly if you like, at [email protected].

That's great! Thanks for telling us what we need to do to increase sales. Could you please tell us how P5 is going to increase our sales, if at all?

You said: "Our phone support hours are 10am to 8pm eastern, and if your call goes to voicemail please do leave a detailed message. There are only one or two people answering phones at any one time, so we make it a priority to return calls with messages left as quickly as possible, typically within three hours."

For European buyer that means from 4pm to 2am exclusive, not to mention Asia. After 8 years on the scene and after massive $61 million investment received 6 months ago you still have only 1-2 people answering phones from 4pm to 2am CET?

Good luck to all the buyers and our sales too.

But hey, Jonathan... this is not your fault buddy...I trust you work hard for your salary and follow the instructions given. Thank you so much for your shout! I will get in touch soon.